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Orb
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Guide

Getting started

Install Orb, meet the requirements, and launch your first agent session.

What you need

Orb requires macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later on Apple Silicon, and your agent's CLI on your PATH: claude for Claude Code, codex for OpenAI Codex. Orb runs the CLI you already have and never installs or updates it. Your agent, your login, your settings.

A Local profile runs on the host with no extra setup. Container profiles run inside Apple's native container runtime, which also needs macOS 26.

Install

  1. Download Orb and open the disk image.
  2. Drag Orb into your Applications folder.
  3. Launch it. Orb lives in the menu bar, not the Dock.

Your first session

  1. Press the global hot key, ⌃⌥Space by default, or click the glass tab on the right edge of any screen. The dock slides in.
  2. Hit +, type your prompt, and pick a folder to work in.
  3. Press Return to launch your agent. A new bubble appears, and its live pane opens on the left.

That is the whole loop. Press the hot key again to hide the dock; the session keeps running in the background.

Permissions, briefly

Orb needs no permissions by default. The global hot key uses the system hot key API, so no Accessibility access is required. The one opt-in exception is New session from selection, which reads the frontmost app's selected text and so asks for Accessibility. It stays off until you turn it on. The full picture lives on the security page.

Where to next